Sea Breeze review – a phantasmagoric and unforgettable spectacle

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/sep/24/sea-breeze-review-winter-gardens-morecambe

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The Victorian ballroom, steam bath and grand esplanade that once formed Morecambe’s Winter Gardens complex have long been demolished. But the 3,000-capacity theatre, which closed for public use in 1977, survives as a derelict shell.

Of course, it’s haunted. There are reports of people being pushed and jostled by unseen forces in the wings, and perhaps if you stood in the abandoned auditorium long enough, the ghosts would come out to entertain you; though this remarkable site-specific performance presented by Live at Lica, Raisin & Willow and Imitating the Dog is a theatrical haunting of a different kind.

Sea Breeze is a form of architectural tone-poem in which the voices of those with memories of the theatre – the unseen cast of ushers, cleaners, stage-door staff and flymen – are superimposed with an invisible choir and a stunning montage of historical and abstract images that play across the peeling, stuccoed balconies and barrel-vaulted roof.

The audience drinks in the spectacle from the stage – which seems disproportionately small for the immense size of the auditorium – experiencing the frisson of sharing the space where Laurel and Hardy, Laurence Olivier and the Rolling Stones once stood. Jonathan Raisin’s evocative score is based around the lugubrious tone of a bass saxophone and contains echoes of Edward Elgar’s Weary Wind of the West, which the composer premiered here at the Morecambe choral festival in 1903.

Imitating the Dog’s breathtaking visuals flood the stalls with sea water and transform iron pillars into cascading fountains, ironically providing a contemporary equivalent of the magic lantern displays that ultimately forced such behemoth music halls out of business. It’s a phantasmagoric and unforgettable spectacle – though as Archie Rice advised in The Entertainer (parts of which were filmed here in 1959): don’t clap too hard, it’s a very old building.

• Until 27 September. Box office: 01524 594 151. Venue: Winter Gardens, Morecambe.

• Sea Breeze breathes new life into Morecambe’s Winter Gardens